House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and fellow GOP committee member Trey Gowdy have been invited to the Justice Department for a classified briefing Thursday about the latest document request related to the Russia investigation, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.Talks between the Justice Department and Nunes have been intensifying over the last day as the two sides try to cut a deal and avoid a standoff that could lead to House Republicans ultimately pursuing contempt charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The White House, which has thus far sided with the Justice Department over Nunes, has also been involved in the talks, multiple sources say. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and another top Justice Department official were seen leaving the White House on Tuesday evening.
Nunes and Rosenstein also discussed the matter over the phone Tuesday evening, according to sources briefed on the matter.

A government watchdog group released new emails on Thursday that revealed former FBI Director James Comey seemingly coordinated his testimony last year before the Senate Intelligence Committee with special counsel Robert Mueller.
Top-level FBI officials advised Comey to "consult" with Mueller before testifying in front of any congressional committees regarding the Trump administration firing him as FBI Director and alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Journalist Sara Carter notes:

It is the first time evidence reveals there was coordination between the Special Counsel and Comey in the long drawn out controversial Mueller investigation.

Shortly after Comey was fired, his then Chief of Staff James Rybicki sent an email to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich, former FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, and others that said:

Please see a DRAFT response to Director Comey (below). I will hold pending further direction….
Director:
In response to your emails below we have consulted with executive management here, including the General Counsel, and recommend the following:

That your counsel convey any acceptance or declinations to invitations to testify directly to the Committees.

That your counsel consult with Special Counsel Mueller to determine the timing of any such testimony and,

The Office of General Counsel stands ready to discuss with you in consultation with the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel, institutional privileges or prerogatives that may be presented by any such testimony.

Judicial Watch reported that sources have indicated that Comey's "opening statement and subsequent testimony were coordinated with Mueller."
Comey revealed at the hearing that he intentionally leaked his memos that allegedly documented his interactions with Trump, which contained classified information so that a special counsel would be appointed.

"I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter," Comey said during his testimony. "Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons. I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. I asked a close friend to do it."
Weighing in on the newly released emails, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton slammed Comey for his actions.
"These documents show that James Comey, who was fired by the president, nevertheless had easy, friendly access to the FBI as he prepped his infamous anti-Trump testimony to the Senate," Fitton said. "This collusion led to Comey’s attacking President Trump and misusing FBI records as part of a vendetta against the president."

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Nunes was denied access to the information on the grounds that it "could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI."
After the White House caved to Rosenstein and Nunes was barred from seeing the documents, it also emerged that this same intelligence had already been shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 US election.
On Wednesday afternoon, however, news emerged that Nunes and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) would receive a classified Thursday briefing at the DOJ on the documents. This is, to put it lightly, incredibly significant.Why? Because it appears that the FBI may have had a mole embedded in the Trump campaign.
In a bombshell op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel shares a few key insights about recent developments. Perhaps we should start with the ending and let you take it from there. Needless to say Strassel's claims, if true, would have wide ranging implications for the CIA, FBI, DOJ and former Obama administration officials.Strassel concludes:

"I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it."

Authored by Kimberley Strassel, op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,About That FBI ‘Source’
Did the bureau engage in outright spying against the 2016 Trump campaign?
The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications.
Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it.
House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that “declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.” Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”
This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.
The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.
This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already knew about, which was bad enough. Obama political appointees rampantly “unmasked” Trump campaign officials to monitor their conversations, while the FBI played dirty with its surveillance warrant against Carter Page, failing to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its supporting information came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now we find it may have also been rolling out human intelligence, John Le Carrť style, to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
Which would lead to another big question for the FBI: When? The bureau has been doggedly sticking with its story that a tip in July 2016 about the drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos launched its counterintelligence probe. Still, the players in this affair—the FBI, former Director Jim Comey, the Steele dossier authors—have been suspiciously vague on the key moments leading up to that launch date. When precisely was the Steele dossier delivered to the FBI? When precisely did the Papadopoulos information come in?
And to the point, when precisely was this human source operating? Because if it was prior to that infamous Papadopoulos tip, then the FBI isn’t being straight. It would mean the bureau was spying on the Trump campaign prior to that moment. And that in turn would mean that the FBI had been spurred to act on the basis of something other than a junior campaign aide’s loose lips.
We also know that among the Justice Department’s stated reasons for not complying with the Nunes subpoena was its worry that to do so might damage international relationships. This suggests the “source” may be overseas, have ties to foreign intelligence, or both. That’s notable, given the highly suspicious role foreigners have played in this escapade. It was an Australian diplomat who reported the Papadopoulos conversation. Dossier author Christopher Steele is British, used to work for MI6, and retains ties to that spy agency as well as to a network of former spooks. It was a former British diplomat who tipped off Sen. John McCain to the dossier. How this “top secret” source fits into this puzzle could matter deeply.
I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it. But what is clear is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the FBI’s 2016 behavior, and the country will never get the straight story until President Trump moves to declassify everything possible. It’s time to rip off the Band-Aid.

Paul Sperry made another titillating tweet Friday morning, in which he writes:
"DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets"

DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 11, 2018

As we reported in March, Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee was investigating the Obama State Department under John Kerry for its involvement in the dissemination of the unverified "Steele Dossier," along with a second anti-Trump dossier written by Clinton confidant Cody Shearer. Nunes referred to this as "Phase 2" of his committee's probe into Russian influence in the 2016 US election.
Nunes is also investigating whether former CIA director John Brennan perjured himself during Congressional testimony about the Steele Dossier. As Paul Sperry wrote in February:

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. -RealClear Investigations

So, if Sperry's tweet is correct, the Obama State department, CIA, and FBI conspired to set "Russian espionage traps" for minor players in the Trump campaign, and the FBI had a mole within the Trump campaign, that giant sucking sound you might hear is nothing short of the US Intelligence community starting to implode.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote Friday to the FBI and Department of Justice, pushing the agencies for answers about the interview of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, citing an “apparently contradiction” between what former FBI Director James Comey said to the committee, and what he has said since.

Grassley’s letter requests transcripts of intercepted calls, any FBI summaries, the FBI agents notes of their interview with Flynn by May 25. It also requests an interview with one of the agents who conducted the interview with Flynn.
Grassley says that due to the guilty plea, “the Committee’s oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it.”

“So too does the Committee’s interest in learning the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then-Directory Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims,” he says.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is getting to the bottom of things, and some think he's laying out a path to exonerate former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn - who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI over his contacts with former Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
It has been suggested that the FBI set Flynn up, and his admission of guilt could have been to avoid sure financial ruin trying to fight the Special Counsel. Others say Flynn was protecting his son, Michael Flynn Jr., who served as his father's aide for his consulting company, Flynn Intel Group.
In a very direct Friday letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Grassley gets straight to the point - going after former FBI Director Comey's blatant contradiction between what he told two Congressional committees - which was that the FBI agents who interviewed Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn "saw nothing that led them to believe [he] was lying." - and what Comey told Fox News host Bret Baier - the complete opposite of his Congressional testimony.
Grassley's letter reads:

Director Comey specifically told us during that briefing that the FBI agents who interviewed Lt. General Michael Flynn, “saw nothing that led them to believe [he was] lying.” Our own Committee staff’s notes indicate that Mr. Comey said the “agents saw no change in his demeanor or tone that would say he was being untruthful.” Contrary to his public statements during his current book tour denying any memory of those comments, then-Director Comey led us to believe during that briefing that the agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he intentionally lied about his conversation with the Ambassador and that the Justice Department was unlikely to prosecute him for false statements made in that interview.

Now compare to what Comey said on Fox while promoting his book, A Higher Loyalty:

Baier: Did you tell lawmakers that FBI agents didn't believe former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was lying intentionally to investigators?Comey: No. And I saw that in the media. I don't know what - maybe someone misunderstood something I said. I didn't believe that, and didn't say that.

Grassley's Friday letter also notes that "The Department has withheld the Flynn-related documents since our initial bipartisan request last year," referring to the FBI's materials from the Flynn interview.
Then comes the bottom line:

"the Committee’s oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it. So too does the Committee’s interest in learning the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then-Directory [sic] Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims."

In other words, the DOJ is out of excuses - and in light of the Comey contradictions - including the fact that he gave Congress the impression Flynn wasn't going to be prosecuted, it's clear that the DOJ has been hiding key facts that would significantly weaken the Flynn case.
Grassley then demands the following no later than May 25, 2018:

1. "The information requested in our February 15, 2017 letter, including the transcripts of the reportedly intercepted calls and any FBI reports summarizing them; and"
2. The FBI agents’ 302s memorializing their interview of Flynn and 1A supporting docs, including the agents’ notes.

Then it gets really interesting
Grassley demands a transcribed interview with Special Agent Joe Pientka - who he reveals to be the second FBI agent that interviewed Flynn. Prior to Friday, it was only known that (Trump-hating) Special Agent Peter Strzok was in the Flynn interview, while Pientka's name was kept nonpublic.
Pientka can now testify to whether or not McCabe had him alter his 302 form, which would send things nuclear. Given the DOJ's stonewalling to this point, it will be interesting to see how they respond to Grassley's new demands. Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has likened Congressional efforts to pry information from the agency "extortion." Clues to piece things together
Speaking to the suggestion that the 302 forms were altered is an analysis by Sundance of Conservative Tree House, who says "it's likely Chairman Grassley outed the name [Pientka's] for a reason." (h/t American Thinker)

Regarding the "widely held belief" that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the FBI agents (Strzok and Pientka) to shape their FBI reports of the interview (FD-302's) to assist a "Flynn lied" narrative…. evidence of that is within the most recent text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok:
♦January 23, 2017, the day before the Flynn interview, Lisa Page says: "I can feel my heart beating harder, I'm so stressed about all the ways THIS has the potential to go fully off the rails." Weird!
♦Strzok replies: "I know. I just talked with John, we're getting together as soon as I get in to finish that write up for Andy (MCCABE) this morning." Strzok agrees with Page about being stressed that "THIS" could go off the rails…(Strzok's meeting w Flynn the next day)
♦Why would Page & Strzok be stressed about "THIS" potentially going off the rails if everything was by the book?
BECAUSE IT WASN'T!
It was a conspiracy to entrap Gen Mike Flynn. All Strzok needed was an excuse to speak w Flynn. Everything in the 302 was likely fabricated.
♦February 14th, 2017, there is another note about the FBI reports filed from the interview.
Peter Strzok asks Lisa Page if FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is OK with his report: "Also, is Andy good with F-302?"
Lisa Page replies: "Launch on F 302".
And he reminds us that previously, on September 10, 2016, Strzok texted about withholding 302s that he called "VERY inflammatory"

"is Andy good with F-302?" Strzok asks page, weeks after they're stressing out about something going "off the rails." While not conclusive evidence that the 302's were altered, at least points to some sort of crisis management within the agency in relation to recent events.

But there’s one episode even Mueller’s former law enforcement comrades — and independent ethicists — acknowledge raises legitimate legal issues and a possible conflict of interest in his overseeing the Russia election probe.

In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.
Yes, that’s the same Deripaska who has surfaced in Mueller’s current investigation and who was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration.

The Levinson mission is confirmed by more than a dozen participants inside and outside the FBI, including Deripaska, his lawyer, the Levinson family and a retired agent who supervised the case. Mueller was kept apprised of the operation, officials told me.
Some aspects of Deripaska’s help were chronicled in a 2016 book by reporter Barry Maier, but sources provide extensive new information about his role.

They said FBI agents courted Deripaska in 2009 in a series of secret hotel meetings in Paris, Vienna, Budapest and Washington. Agents persuaded the aluminum industry magnate to underwrite the mission. The Russian billionaire insisted the operation neither involve nor harm his homeland.

“We knew he was paying for his team helping us, and that probably ran into the millions,” a U.S. official involved in the operation confirmed.

Deripaska’s lawyer says the Russian ultimately spent $25 million assembling a private search and rescue team that worked with Iranian contacts under the FBI’s watchful eye. Photos and videos indicating Levinson was alive were uncovered.

Then in fall 2010, the operation secured an offer to free Levinson. The deal was scuttled, however, when the State Department become uncomfortable with Iran’s terms, according to Deripaska’s lawyer and the Levinson family.

FBI officials confirmed State hampered their efforts.

“We tried to turn over every stone we could to rescue Bob, but every time we started to get close, the State Department seemed to always get in the way,” said Robyn Gritz, the retired agent who supervised the Levinson case in 2009, when Deripaska first cooperated, but who left for another position in 2010 before the Iranian offer arrived. “I kept Director Mueller and Deputy Director Pistole informed of the various efforts and operations, and they offered to intervene with State, if necessary.”

FBI officials ended the operation in 2011, concerned that Deripaska’s Iranian contacts couldn’t deliver with all the U.S. infighting. Levinson was never found; his whereabouts remain a mystery, 11 years after he disappeared.

“Deripaska’s efforts came very close to success,” said David McGee, a former federal prosecutor who represents Levinson’s family. “We were told at one point that the terms of Levinson’s release had been agreed to by Iran and the U.S. and included a statement by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointing a finger away from Iran. At the last minute Secretary Clinton decided not to make the agreed-on statement.”

The State Department declined comment, and a spokesman for Clinton did not offer comment. Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, declined to answer questions. As did McCabe.

The FBI had three reasons for choosing Deripaska for a mission worthy of a spy novel. First, his aluminum empire had business in Iran. Second, the FBI wanted a foreigner to fund the operation because spending money in Iran might violate U.S. sanctions and other laws. Third, agents knew Deripaska had been banished since 2006 from the United States by State over reports he had ties to organized crime and other nefarious activities. He denies the allegations, and nothing was ever proven in court.

The FBI rewarded Deripaska for his help. In Fall 2009, according to U.S. entry records, Deripaska visited Washington on a rare law enforcement parole visa. And since 2011 he has been granted entry at least eight times on a diplomatic passport, even though he doesn’t work for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Former FBI officials confirm they arranged the access.

Deripaska said in a statement through Adam Waldman, his American lawyer, that FBI agents told him State’s reasons for blocking his U.S. visa were “merely a pretext.”

“The FBI said they had undertaken a careful background check, and if there was any validity to the State Department smears, they would not have reached out to me for assistance,” the Russian said.

Then, over the past two years, evidence emerged tying him to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the first defendant charged by Mueller’s Russia probe with money laundering and illegal lobbying.

Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money.

Mueller’s indictment of Manafort makes no mention of Deripaska, even though prosecutors have evidence that Manafort contemplated inviting his old Russian client for a 2016 Trump campaign briefing. Deripaska said he never got the invite and investigators have found no evidence it occurred. There’s no public evidence Deripaska had anything to do with election meddling.

The U.S. government in April imposed sanctions on Deripaska, one of several prominent Russians targeted to punish Vladimir Putin — using the same sort of allegations that State used from 2006 to 2009. Yet, between those two episodes, Deripaska seemed good enough for the FBI to ask him to fund that multimillion-dollar rescue mission and to allow him into the country eight times.

I was alerted to Deripaska’s past FBI relationship by U.S. officials who wondered whether the Russian’s conspicuous absence from Mueller’s indictments might be related to his FBI work.

They aren’t the only ones.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told me he believes Mueller has a conflict of interest because his FBI previously accepted financial help from a Russian that is, at the very least, a witness in the current probe.

“The real question becomes whether it was proper to leave him (Deripaska) out of the Manafort indictment, and whether that omission was to avoid the kind of transparency that is really required by the law,” Dershowitz said.

Melanie Sloan, a former Clinton Justice Department lawyer and longtime ethics watchdog, told me a “far more significant issue” is whether the earlier FBI operation was even legal: “It’s possible the bureau’s arrangement with Mr. Deripaska violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the government from accepting voluntary services.”

George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley agreed: “If the operation with Deripaska contravened federal law, this figure could be viewed as a potential embarrassment for Mueller. The question is whether he could implicate Mueller in an impropriety.”

This week, one of the Russian companies accused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of funding a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was revealed in court to not have existed during the time period alleged by Mueller's team of prosecutors, according to a lawyer representing the defendant.
U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey asked Eric Dubelier, one of two lawyers representing the accused Russian company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, if he was representing a third company listed in Mueller's indictment.

"What about Concord Catering?" Harvey asked Dubelier."The government makes an allegation that there's some association. I don't mean for you to – do you represent them, or not, today? And are we arraigning them as well?"
"We're not," Dubelier responded."And the reason for that, Your Honor, is I think we're dealing with a situation of the government having indicted the proverbial ham sandwich.""That company didn't exist as a legal entity during the time period alleged by the government," Dubelier continued.
"If at some later time they show me that it did exist, we would probably represent them. But for purposes of today, no, we do not."

The term "indict a ham sandwich" is believed to have originated from a 1985 report in the New York Daily News when New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler told the news publication that government prosecutors have so much influence over grand juries that they could get them to "indict a ham sandwich."

The Wall Street Journal continues to counter the liberal mainstream media's anti-Trump-ness with today's op-ed from Steven Calabresi, who served as a special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese (1985-87) and a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia (1987-88). Calabresi proclaims that Mueller's investigation has crossed the legal line, explaining that it's unconstitutional under 'Morrison vs Olson' - the decision, not the dissent...Via The Wall Street Journal,
Judge T.S. Ellis has expressed skepticism about the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “What we don’t want in this country is... anyone with unfettered power,” Judge Ellis, who is to preside over the trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, told prosecutor Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben May 4. “So it’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me that the special prosecutor has unlimited powers.”
Judge Ellis is right to be skeptical. Mr. Mueller’s investigation has crossed a constitutional line, for reasons the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in the 1988 case Morrison v. Olson. That case is best known for Justice Antonin Scalia’s powerful lone dissent arguing that the post-Watergate independent counsel statute was unconstitutional. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s opinion for the court, while upholding the statute, set forth limits that the Mueller investigation has exceeded.
At issue is the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which provides that “principal officers” must be appointed by the president with the Senate’s consent. Rehnquist wrote that independent counsel Alexia Morrison qualified as an “inferior officer,” not subject to the appointment process, because her office was “limited in jurisdiction” to “certain federal officials suspected of certain serious federal crimes.”
Mr. Mueller, in contrast, is investigating a large number of people and has already charged defendants with many different kinds of crimes, including - as in Mr. Manafort’s case - ones unrelated to any collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. That’s too much power for an inferior officer to have. Only a principal officer, such as a U.S. attorney, can behave the way Mr. Mueller is behaving. Mr. Mueller is much more powerful today than any of the 96 U.S. attorneys. He is behaving like a principal officer.Rehnquist’s majority opinion has never been overturned. In Edmund v. U.S. and in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Oversight Board, the justices said that an officer cannot be inferior unless he has a boss - as Mr. Mueller does in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed him. But that’s not a sufficient condition. As a principal officer, Mr. Rosenstein could legally have brought all the indictments Mr. Mueller has. But he may not delegate that authority to Mr. Mueller, any more than President Trump could delegate his veto power to Mr. Rosenstein.The Framers struggled long and hard over the Appointments Clause. For better or worse, they arrived at the process of presidential nomination with senatorial consent. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel should confirm the analysis set forth above in a legal opinion to guide Mr. Rosenstein in the exercise of his duties. Judge Ellis should dismiss the indictment against Mr. Manafort on Appointments Clause grounds. All other defendants Mr. Mueller charges, and witnesses he subpoenas, should challenge the constitutionality of his actions on Appointments Clause grounds.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office is trying to block an investigation into how anonymously sourced accounts of their investigation leaked to the media, claiming the leaks don't amount to evidence of illegal grand jury leaks - which could just as easily come from defense attorneys in the Paul Manafort case or others outside the investigation, reports Politico.
Mueller's team has asked a federal judge in Virginia to turn down a request for a hearing on the leaks, requested by attorneys representing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“Manafort’s speculative claim of improper conduct falls far short of the showing necessary to warrant a hearing on potential violations of [a grand jury secrecy rule] or of his constitutional rights,” prosecutors wrote. “A pretrial hearing on alleged government leaks, which would itself generate publicity on the very matters that Manafort finds prejudicial, is unwarranted.”

Manafort, who is facing separate criminal cases brought by Mueller in federal court in Washington and Alexandria, Virginia, filed a motion late last month complaining that he was unfairly attacked in a flurry of news reports that appeared to be based on illegal leaks of grand jury secrets and classified information.
In the motion, filed with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, Manafort’s defense said the release of sensitive details about the investigation threatened his ability to get a fair trial. -Politico

“By their actions, it is self-evident that the objective of these government sources was to create unfair prejudice against Mr. Manafort and thereby deprive him of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights,” attorneys Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle wrote. “The government’s investigation, and the criminal charges that ultimately resulted from it, are the epitome of a party seeking to decide a case in the press and not the courtroom.”Politico posits that whether or not Manafort's claim has legal merit, his claim that the leaks have hurt his case "could bolster his chances of winning a pardon from President Donald Trump, who has railed against leaks he alleges have emerged from the Mueller investigation."
Mueller's team, on the other hand, says that there's no reason to believe the news accounts identified by Manafort's defense team came from prosecutors or investigators leaking information that came from a grand jury.
“He cites ten articles, none of which purports to disclose grand jury information,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “Many of the matters reported, if accurate, would have been known to the defense, to witnesses who were interviewed or subpoenaed for documents, or to other investigators examining overlapping issues.”
Mueller's team suggests that the leaks could have come from members of Congress or their aides.
“Multiple accounts note that Manafort was also the subject of ongoing congressional investigations,” Mueller’s team noted. “References to ‘officials’ or ‘American officials’ in the reports … could thus be to people who are not subject to [grand jury secrecy] restrictions.”
In other words - "Don't look into this, it could have been anyone" - including someone on Manafort's team.

Congressional investigators are reviewing 2017 testimony by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who said that "a human source from inside the Trump organization" had "decided to pick up the phone and report something" to the FBI.
Fusion GPS is a Democrat-linked opposition research firm which produced the infamous anti-Trump "Steele Dossier," compiled from a series of memos provided by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele and paid for in part by the Clinton campaign.
Simpson told Congressional investigators on August 22 that Steele told him the FBI had corroborated parts of his dossier with "a human source from inside the Trump organization."
As the Daily Caller's Chuck Ross notes, Fusion's allies quickly began to backpedal from Simpson's statement, telling news outlets that there was no mole...

"Instead, he was referring to George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser whose encounter with an Australian diplomat in May 2016 was reportedly the catalyst for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. The diplomat, Alexander Downer, reportedly claimed that Papadopoulos discussed Russian dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." -Daily Caller

That's all out the window now...
In light of last week's bombshell that the DOJ was forced to hand over intelligence to House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes which points to a mole within the Trump campaign, both House and Senate oversight panels are taking a fresh look at Simpson's testimony about that "human source."
In other words - did Steele tell Simpson about the FBI's alleged mole in the Trump campaign?

Simpson's lawyer said in a January letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his initial testimony was accurate.
Mr. Simpson stands by his testimony,” said Joshua Levy, Fusion's attorney in the January 18 letter. Levy had been asked in a January 11 letter whether Simpson’s testimony about the whistleblower (and now potential mole) within the Trump campaign was a mischaracterization, as news reports claimed.
“Glenn Simpson said that in what was closed testimony. Then it became public. Now he’s confirmed that he was telling Congress the truth, which is probably a good idea,” California Rep. Devin Nunes said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “We believe he was telling the truth. And what we’re trying to do is get the documents to figure out — did they actually have, what methods were used to open this counter intelligence investigation?”
“I think if the campaign was somehow set up, I think that would be a problem. Right? If they were somehow meetings that occurred and all of this was a setup,” Nunes said, adding. “Because we have yet to see any credible evidence or intelligence that led to the opening of this investigation.”

Two former colleagues of ex-CIA Director John Brennan have contradicted his claim that the unverified "Steele Dossier" was not part of the US Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference in the 2016 election, reports Paul Sperry of RealClear Investigations.
Central to the controversy is a statement by recently retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, who stated in a classified letter to Congress that the anti-Trump memos which made up the dossier did factor in to the IC assessment - which was reinforced in a CNN interview by James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence who said that the assessment was based on "some of the substantive content of the dossier," and that the IC was "able to corroborate" certain dossier allegations.

In a March 5, 2018, letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Adm. Rogers informed the committee that a two-page summary of the dossier — described as “the Christopher Steele information” — was “added” as an “appendix to the ICA draft,” and that consideration of that appendix was “part of the overall ICA review/approval process.”His skepticism of the dossier may explain why the NSA parted company with other intelligence agencies and cast doubt on one of its crucial conclusions: that Vladimir Putin personally ordered a cyberattack on Hillary Clinton’s campaign to help Donald Trump win the White House. -RealClear Investigations

What's more, Brennan was feeding some of the dossier material to President Obama and passing it off as credible, reports Sperry.

“Brennan put some of the dossier material into the PDB [presidential daily briefing] for Obama and described it as coming from a ‘credible source,’ which is how they viewed Steele,” said the source familiar with the House investigation. "But they never corroborated his sources.” -RCI

The Justice Department said Tuesday it responded to demands from Capitol Hill Republicans to turn over documents about former FBI Director James Comey's law professor friend who last year released contents of Comey’s memos to the media.
DOJ officials told Fox News the response was transmitted to Capitol Hill, but it was not immediately clear what the response was.
The House Oversight Committee told Fox News it did not receive any documents from the DOJ, but did receive a verbal response and expected to get the documents by Thursday.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to question top Obama administration intelligence officials behind closed doors on Wednesday on their explosive assessment that officially accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election to boost then-candidate Donald Trump.
The committee, led by Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., invited former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, former National Security Agenda Director Michael Rogers (who retired earlier this year) and former FBI Director James Comey.DOCUMENTS SUGGEST POSSIBLE COORDINATION BETWEEN CIA, FBI, OBAMA WH AND DEM OFFICIALS EARLY IN TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE: INVESTIGATORS
Comey, though, plans to skip the closed-door session Wednesday due to a “previously scheduled engagement,” his attorney said.

“This gives staff the month of August in all likelihood to wrap up our investigation and for staff to work intensely while we’re out of here and not getting in their hair."
- Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.

Comey, who was fired last May, has been on a media blitz in recent weeks promoting his memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” in which he is highly critical of now-President Trump.
Burr and Warner, who are leading the panel in investigating Russian meddling and coordination with Trump campaign associates in the 2016 presidential election, hope to wrap up their probe by the end of summer.

Attorneys for an alleged component of Russian trolling efforts during the 2016 presidential election are demanding that special counsel Robert Mueller be forced to reveal the grand jury instructions used in count one of the government’s indictment against Concord Management and Consulting LLC. The nine-page motion (plus supporting documents) filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia relies upon Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(3)(E)(ii) which provides:

The court may authorize disclosure—at a time, in a manner, and subject to any other conditions that it directs—of a grand-jury matter…at the request of a defendant who shows that a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury.

The motion further specifies that Concord Management is requesting a private “inspection of the legal instructions provided to the grand jury regarding Count One of the Indictment…in order to determine whether the instructions provided could support a motion to dismiss Count One of the Indictment.”
Concord’s argument is that Mueller failed to include a necessary knowledge requirement in count one of the indictment against Concord Management and other Russian entities and therefore, may need to be dismissed. (A knowledge requirement refers to intent or knowledge of criminal wrongdoing. Thus, an allegedly offending party would have knowledge of the criminality they’re alleged to have engaged in.) The motion notes, “violations of the relevant federal campaign laws and foreign agent registration requirements administered by the DOJ and the FEC require the defendant to have acted ‘willfully,’ a word that does not appear anywhere in Count One of the Indictment.”

The motion continues, “As such, Count One of the Indictment appears to be facially invalid because it fails to charge an essential element of the offense of conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing and defeating the functions of the FEC and the DOJ, that is, that the Defendant acted willfully, in this case meaning that Defendant was aware of the FEC and FARA requirements, agreed to violate those requirements, and ultimately acted with intent to violate those requirements.”
Concord Management’s Monday motion contains at least one reference to U.S. case law where similar indictments were dismissed because they failed to adequately track statutory language. In other words, Concord Management is arguing that Mueller and his army of attorneys charged Concord Management (and other Russian entities) with a vague-sounding “crime” that isn’t actually a crime.
In fact, Concord Management’s motion explicitly says as much, claiming, “[T]he DOJ never brought any case like the instant Indictment, that is, an alleged conspiracy by a foreign corporation to ‘interfere’ in a Presidential election by allegedly funding free speech. The obvious reason for this is that no such crime exists in the federal criminal code.”

If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal. Only the release or review of documents that the House Intelligence Committee (also, Senate Judiciary) is asking for
can give the conclusive answers.
Drain the Swamp!https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...51982467014656

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice
look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes -
and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...56454590193665

President Trump will meet with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Chris Wray and the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on Monday, where they will discuss the latest developments in the bombshell report that the Obama administration used a longtime FBI and CIA asset, identified as 73-year-old Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on his campaign.

The Obama administration paid accused informant Stefan Halper nearly $300,000 for “research” during the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump was the GOP candidate.
Overall, Halper, who was recently accused of spying on multiple Trump campaign aides, was paid over $1 million by the Dept. of Defense between 2012 and 2018 through a variety of vaguely worded contracts.

The contracts include “Research And Development In The Social Sciences And Humanities (2012),” “Russia-China Relationship Study (2015),” and the “India and China Econ Study (2016),” according to the web site USASpending.gov.
Most interestingly, Halper was paid $282,295 only four days after the Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo! news article which claimed that “U.S. intelligence officials” were investigating Trump aide Carter Page for alleged ties to the Kremlin.

As previewed earlier, on Monday afternoon president Trump met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Chris Wray and the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, in a discussion of the latest developments in the bombshell report that the Obama administration used a longtime FBI and CIA asset, identified as 73-year-old Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on Trump's campaign.
With the meeting concluded, the White House issued a statement according to which the DOJ said it has asked the inspector general to "expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign" and adds that "White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested."
Full statement below:

"Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's or the Department of Justice's tactics concerning the Trump Campaign. It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested."

Translated: a lot of dirty laundry is about to become public.
As Sean Davis points out, the statement confirms Mollie Hemingway's reporting that contrary to claims from the Washington Post and anonymous DOJ officials made last week, "the White House was never on board with Rosenstein's plan to obstruct a congressional subpoena."

This confirms @MZHemingway's reporting last week that, contra claims from the Washington Post and anonymous DOJ officials, the White House was never on board with Rosenstein's plan to obstruct a congressional subpoena. https://t.co/kblJVUNcoT
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 21, 2018

As Davis also adds, "it's also noteworthy that the White House released a statement immediately following the meeting, before Rosenstein et. al. could start leaking inaccurate information about the White House's position, which is what happened after the last meeting on the matter."

The Obama administration paid accused informant Stefan Halper nearly $300,000 for “research” during the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump was the GOP candidate.
Overall, Halper, who was recently accused of spying on multiple Trump campaign aides, was paid over $1 million by the Dept. of Defense between 2012 and 2018 through a variety of vaguely worded contracts.

The contracts include “Research And Development In The Social Sciences And Humanities (2012),” “Russia-China Relationship Study (2015),” and the “India and China Econ Study (2016),” according to the web site USASpending.gov.
Most interestingly, Halper was paid $282,295 only four days after the Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo! news article which claimed that “U.S. intelligence officials” were investigating Trump aide Carter Page for alleged ties to the Kremlin.

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.

Halper's contracts were funded through four annual awards paid directly out of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Established as the DoD's "internal think tank" in 1973 by Richard Nixon (whose administration Halper worked for), the ONA was run by foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall from its inception until his 2015 retirement at the age of 93, after which he was succeeded by current director James H. Baker.

(h/t ProHeat)
According to the Website USASPENDING.gov, the payments to Halper are for "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (2012)," "RESEARCH AND STUDIES - THE YEAR 2030, (2014)", "RUSSIA-CHINA RELATIONSHIP STUDY. (2015)," and "INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY (2016)."
The most recent award to Halper for $411,575 was made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 - three daysafter aSeptember 23Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "pissgate" dossier creator Christopher Steele. The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified "pissgate" dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.
Halper approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails.

He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. -New York Times

And as the Daily Caller reports, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page.

Page noted that in their first conversation at Cambridge, Halper said he was longtime friends with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. A person close to Manafort told TheDCNF that Manafort has not seen Halper since the Gerald Ford administration. Manafort and Page are accused in the Steele dossier of having worked together on the campaign’s collusion conspiracy, but both men say they have never met. -Daily Caller

Spying on Page after the election...
The second installment of Halper's 2016 DoD contract is dated July 26, 2017 in the amount of $129,280 - around three months before the FISA warrant on Carter Page was set to expire following repeated renewals signed by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and a federal judge.On July 28, he emailed Page with what the Trump campaign aide describes as a "cordial" communication, which did not seem suspicious to him at the time.
In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. "It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote.

The email to Page was sent on the same day former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci reportedly went on a "vulgar tirade" against then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to find out if Page was still "on the inside," Halper may have reached out to find out what he knew.
Halper then invites Page to his Virginia farm, telling the former Trump adviser "Be in touch when you have the time. Would be great to catch up."

Reporters keep asking me about my interactions with Prof. Halper.
I found all our interactions to be cordial.
Like this email I received about a year after I first met him.
He never seemed suspicious.
Just a few scholars exchanging ideas.
He had interests in policy, and politics. pic.twitter.com/D5SKkvN2Bx
— Carter Page, Ph.D. (@carterwpage) May 20, 2018

July 2017: Two days after receiving a payment from the federal govt, Stefan Halper emailed Carter Page asking about internal White House staff pic.twitter.com/Fy17FwEwgk
— Jack Posobiec���� (@JackPosobiec) May 20, 2018

Halper's July 28 email to Page - sent two days after the second portion of his contract kicked in, suggests that the espionage operation against Trump associates was still active seven months into the new administration.

Several new strings have been tacked across the corkboard in the rapidly unraveling 2016 election scandal. Recently obtained FBI emails shed light on what appears to have been high-level coordination between the FBI and CNN surrounding the release of the infamous "Steele" dossier.
In an April leak of the Comey memos, we learned that the former FBI Director briefed then-President-Elect Donald Trump on the dossier on January 6, 2017 after he wrote in a memo that various news outlets - "CNN in particular" - were "looking for a news hook," and would soon be reporting on it.
“I said media like CNN had [the dossier] and were looking for a news hook,” Comey wrote of his interaction with Trump. CNN, on the other hand, considered Comey's meeting with Trump to have legitimized the document - making it their journalistic responsibility to report on it.
Thus - any coordination between the FBI and CNN surrounding its report on the Steele dossier is highly relevant, since the Jan. 10, 2017 release of the dossier by Buzzfeed immediately after CNN's report - along with the subsequent firing of James Comey on May 9, prompted the launch of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation.
CNN's bombshell report on Jan. 10 of last year includes a claim that Comey gave Trump a two-page summary of the dossier - which Comey denies. Regardless, the fact that CNN knew about the Comey-Trump briefing and a specific claim about a two-page memo begs the question; who leaked to CNN? New FBI emails obtained by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) provide a look behind the scenes surrounding Comey's briefing of Trump, as well as what was discussed after the CNN report - suggesting that former Deputy director Andrew McCabe - who was fired for leaking to the press, had specific knowledge of CNN's plans to publish.

Hours before Comey briefed Trump, FBI chief of staff James Rybicki e-mailed staff that Comey “is coming into HQ briefly now for an update from the sensitive matter team.” Just as the same officials dubbed the Clinton e-mail investigation the “mid-year exam” and the anti-Trump counterintelligence investigation “Crossfire Hurricane,” they also used various phrases using “sensitive” to refer obliquely to the dossier.
Two days after the briefing, on January 8, 2017, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who earlier this year was fired and then referred for criminal prosecution by the DOJ inspector general for repeatedly lying about media leaks, wrote an e-mail to top FBI officials with the subject,“Flood is coming.” -The Federalist

“CNN is close to going forward with the sensitive story,” McCabe wrote in an email to Comey, Rybicki, and two others. “The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment.” McCabe does not reveal how he knew CNN’s “trigger” was Comey's briefing to Trump.McCabe shot off a second email shortly thereafter to then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates along with her deputy, Matthew Alexrod, with the subject line "News."
“Just as an FYI, and as expected,” McCabe wrote, “it seems CNN is close to running a story about the sensitive reporting.” Again, how McCabe knew this is unclear and begs investigation.

Republican consultant and former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo claims that a different spy working for the Obama administration approached him in an attempt to infiltrate the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election.
Appearing on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" along with former Trump aide Carter Page, Caputo's comments come amid recent revelations that Stefan Halper, a 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor, was enlisted by the Obama FBI/DOJ to perform espionage on four members of the Trump campaign - both before and after the election. Halper then tried to infiltrate the Trump administration, asking top trade adviser Peter Navaro to recommend him for a job at the State Department according to Axios.Halper has been paid over $1 million by the Department of Defense since 2012, with over $400,000 of it occurring in 2016 and 2017.
And now we have word of yet second spy - possibly from another agency within the Obama administration - approaching yet another member of the Trump campaign.
“Let me tell you something that I know for a fact. This informant, this person that planted, that they tried to plant into the campaign and even into the administration if you believe Axios–he’s not the only person that came at the campaign," Caputo claimed. "And the FBI is not the only Obama agency who came at the campaign,” Caputo continued.
“I know because they came at me. And I’m looking for clearance from my attorney to reveal this to the public."